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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'A conflict with T-Mobile',
	'<{subtitle}>' => 'Written in <span title="Online Education Strategies">UNIV 1001</span> of <a href="http://www.uopeople.edu/">University of the People</a>, finalised on 2016-10-19',
	'<{copyright year}>' => '2016',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<h2>The situation</h2>
<p>
	Finding a topic for this assignment wasn&apos;t easy.
	I frequently run into difficulties, or problems caused by people, but I rarely come across direct conflicts.
	However, I recently had a bit of a conflict with T-Mobile, from 2016-09-24 to 2016-09-27.
	I bought a T-Mobile tablet $a[SIM] card to activate with a new tablet plan; this $a[SIM] card came with a \$40 $a[USD] account credit.
	The instructions that came with the $a[SIM] card told me that I could activate it over the Web.
	However, due to an error in T-Mobile&apos;s website, I couldn&apos;t get the $a[SIM] card to activate.
	I talked to twenty different T-Mobile support representatives, and only the last one finally seemed to have any idea what they were doing.
	Up until that point, all support representatives had been repeating the same unhelpful and incorrect advice.
</p>
<p>
	These representatives had been telling me that I needed to call in via telephone and that I couldn&apos;t activate the $a[SIM] card over the Web, despite the fact that the instructions that came with the $a[SIM] card specifically said that if activating tablet service (as opposed to &quot;smartphone&quot; service), it <strong>*must*</strong> be activated over the Web.
	I explained repeatedly that I didn&apos;t have access to a telephone with which to call them, but each new representative that jumped into the conversion would fail to read the conversation log, and would insist again that I needed to call via telephone.
	Again and again, I explained why calling via telephone wasn&apos;t an option and that the instructions that came with the $a[SIM] card said that it not only <strong>*could*</strong> be activated over the Web, but that if it were to be activated with a tablet plan, it <strong>*must*</strong> be activated over the web.
	Each time they said that if I couldn&apos;t call via telephone, I wouldn&apos;t be able to activate the $a[SIM] card, and each time, I&apos;d say that requiring a telephone line to activate the device when the instructions on the packaging said that it could be activated over the Web was false advertising.
	I&apos;d them ask for my money back, which usually was about the time that the next representative would jump in, the last one would fall silent, and we&apos;d repeat the loop.
</p>
<p>
	Thinking back, while I don&apos;t end up in conflicts often, a large percentage of the conflicts that I do end up dealing with are caused by the fact that other people assume that everyone has telephone service.
	People don&apos;t seem to understand that there are those of use that don&apos;t have or want telephone service, and they demand that certain issues be resolved with that archaic technology just because of how widespread it is.
	We have developed past the need for telephones, but some people are still back in the telephone age.
	They won&apos;t do things using more modern technology, such as the Web and email.
	The Web and email aren&apos;t even new within the last decade, it&apos;s about time that people learn to use them.
	In my opinion, the telephone system is archaic because it uses arbitrary strings of digits as the handles used to reach other people.
	We no longer need to do that.
	Using $a[DNS], we&apos;ve got much better and more human-memorable options.
	<code>mailto:support@t-mobile.com</code> is a much easier to understand and remember handle than <code>tel:+14154369333</code>.
	Did you notice that the telephone number that I provided in that last sentence wasn&apos;t actually related to T-Mobile at all, but to the $a[EFF]? I sure wouldn&apos;t have noticed.
	Just as importantly, would you be able to repeat back that email address without looking at it again? What about the telephone number? Clearly, strings of digits are not appropriate for use as contact handles.
	However, that&apos;s not even the real issue here.
	The issue is that people demand to be contacted via only one specific method that not everyone wants to pay to use.
	It&apos;s possible to get gratis email service.
	If you&apos;ve got Internet service, accessing a website is usually also gratis.
	I wouldn&apos;t even mind if people and companies wanted me to reach them via $a[SIP], $a[XMPP], $a[IRC], or Twitter.
	I also don&apos;t mind when calling by telephone is <strong>*an*</strong> option, as long as it&apos;s not the <strong>*only*</strong> option.
	After all, why should I be paying for telephone service when telephone service isn&apos;t at all related to the other products and services that I use? This is especially true when your product or service is advertised as being usable without a telephone call, as was the case here, as the $a[SIM] card came with instructions for activating over the Web.
</p>
<h2>Conflict analysis</h2>
<p>
	I had no idea which critical thinking analysis tool would work most effectively, so I tried out all four to see which would provide me with the most useful results.
</p>
<h3>Ladder of inference</h3>
<p>
	The ladder of inference seems to be a good tool for attempting to solve problems reasonably.
</p>
<h4>Reality and facts</h4>
<p>
	The reality is that my tablet plan was still not activated and that T-Mobile support was insisting that I call some telephone number and get help over the telephone.
	I had already paid for both the $a[SIM] card and the first two months of service.
	I didn&apos;t have access to a telephone, and even if I did, the $a[SIM] card that I was trying to activate had come with instructions for activating it over the Web.
	If the $a[SIM] card&apos;s packaging had specified that it must be activated over the telephone, I wouldn&apos;t have bought that $a[SIM] card.
</p>
<h4>Selected reality</h4>
<p>
	T-Mobile had an error in their system that was preventing activation over the Web.
	T-Mobile support was refusing to rectify this.
</p>
<h4>Interpreted reality</h4>
<p>
	By insisting that the $a[SIM] card be activated over the telephone, T-Mobile support was effectively making what was stated on the packaging into a form of false advertising, as they were not allowing an activation over the Web as the $a[SIM] card&apos;s packaging and instructions had promised.
</p>
<h4>Assumtions</h4>
<p>
	I assume that whoever set up the system that the T-Mobile support people were working with assumed that everyone has telephone service.
	Many companies seem to assume this.
	I also assume that someone at T-Mobile could fix the problem, so if I could get my issue raised to a high-enough-ranking support representative, this high-ranking support representative would have the clearance needed to set up the tablet plan from their end.
	I likewise assume that because T-Mobile Web support is demanding that I call by telephone, they probably have telephones sitting at their desks.
	I also assume that T-Mobile isn&apos;t going to want to look unreasonable to other potential customers, and might do as they promised if I didn&apos;t keep the situation strictly private.
	Even if they don&apos;t want to do as their $a[SIM] card activation instructions had promised, they might do what&apos;s right simply to keep me quiet.
</p>
<h4>Conclusions</h4>
<p>
	I have to get the attention of the right people.
	If I can find a T-Mobile Web support representative that will place the call on my behalf, everything should be easy to fix.
	So far though, every support representative that I&apos;ve asked to do this has refused.
	Likewise, if I can grab the attention of someone that knows what they&apos;re doing and has the required authorization, I can get them to activate the tablet plan instead.
	If they don&apos;t want to help me, that&apos;s fine, but they took my money for a service that they&apos;re not providing.
	I should consider the option of a refund.
</p>
<h4>Beliefs</h4>
<p>
	I believe that it&apos;s unreasonable to demand that customers have access to any one specific method of communication.
	Demanding that customers call you by telephone is unreasonable.
	Demanding that customers reach you via email is unreasonable.
	Offering both options (and potentially more options) and allowing them to choose is what it takes to be reasonable.
	I also believe that the telephone number system is both hacky (due to the way that telephone number porting is implemented) and outdated (as a better lookup system, $a[DNS], has been invented and should be used in place of telephone numbers).
	I believe that when people insist that I reach out or be reached via a method of communication that I am opposed to, the appropriate response isn&apos;t to give in, but to put up a fight and insist that a more reasonable form of communication be used, especially when the people that I&apos;m reaching out to is a company that has several other methods of contact made available.
	I have reached out to T-Mobile via their own website and over Twitter.
	I&apos;ve seen a T-Mobile support email address as well.
	There&apos;s no reason that T-Mobile support can&apos;t help me using these three methods of communication that they already employ.
	I believe that telephone lines are insecure, while $a[HTTPS] provides reasonable security, so any claims that I need to make a telephone call for &quot;security&quot; reasons are completely bogus.
	I believe that as the packaging of the $a[SIM] card said that I could activate the tablet plan over the Web, T-Mobile must either honor this or they owe me a refund.
</p>
<h4>Actions</h4>
<p>
	As each new support representative told me that they wouldn&apos;t help me, I asked them each to refund my money, as a $a[SIM] card that requires activation over the telephone is <strong>*not*</strong> what I paid for.
	Additionally, I carefully crafted a few public social networking posts over the course of my discussion with T-Mobile support.
	One in particular mentioned both how I still wasn&apos;t able to activate my T-Mobile tablet $a[SIM] card and how I missed my old carrier, Cricket.
	In truth, I don&apos;t miss Cricket at all.
	I don&apos;t really like Cricket, and had only been on their service due to living outside T-Mobile&apos;s coverage area for all of the last school year.
	Now that I&apos;m back within the T-Mobile coverage area, I wanted to get back on my favorite network, T-Mobile.
	However, T-Mobile was refusing to help without being pressured in a public forum, so I needed to do something to get their gears to actually turn.
	T-Mobile support saw my messages each time, and particularly on that message about missing my old carrier, responded before I could even compose my private message directly to them, which I had started to write up as soon as I&apos;d submitted the public message.
</p>
<h3>Starbursting</h3>
<p>
	The method of starbursting proposed in this week&apos;s readings involved drawing a large, six-pointed star in the middle of a page, then writing questions off the points of the star.
	This would be a pain to manage.
	Editing the text of questions as I found better ways of phrasing them would be a difficult, as would making sure that all of my proposed questions fit on the image without leaving too much empty space.
	Additionally, such an image wouldn&apos;t scale well.
	In different Web browsers and different monitor sizes, the image would either be too small, too large, or require horizontal scrolling, none of which are helpful to the learning process or the analysis process.
	As such, I&apos;m instead representing each &quot;point&quot; on the star as a subsection and list.
</p>
<h4>Who</h4>
<ul>
<li>Who can I contact over the Web that can help me?</li>
<li>Who has the authorization to provide the Web-based activation that T-Mobile promised?</li>
</ul>
<h4>What</h4>
<ul>
	<li>
		What does the $a[SIM] card&apos;s packaging say to do to activate a tablet plan?
	</li>
	<li>
		What assumptions is the T-Mobile tablet-activation website making that are invalid for my tablet?
	</li>
	<li>
		What other non-telephone options to I have to deal with this problem?
	</li>
</ul>
<h4>Where</h4>
<ul>
	<li>
		Where do I go for telephone-free support on this issue?
	</li>
	<li>
		Where do I need to put pressure to get T-Mobile to do the right thing?
	</li>
</ul>
<h4>When</h4>
<ul>
	<li>
		When do I need to have this tablet $a[SIM] activated by to avoid getting cut off from the Internet?
	</li>
</ul>
<h4>Why</h4>
<ul>
	<li>
		Why is T-Mobile not keeping the promise stated on the $a[SIM] card&apos;s packaging?
	</li>
	<li>
		Why is T-Mobile support refusing to activate the $a[SIM] card manually on their end?
	</li>
	<li>
		Why is T-Mobile Web support not making the call from their end if a telephone call must be made?
	</li>
	<li>
		Why does a telephone call even need to be made in the first place?
	</li>
</ul>
<h4>How</h4>
<ul>
	<li>
		How do I activate this $a[SIM] card without making a telephone call?
	</li>
	<li>
		How do I get T-Mobile support to take me seriously?
	</li>
	<li>
		How do I diagnose this problem when it&apos;s the remote website that&apos;s returning the error message?
	</li>
</ul>
<h3>Root cause analysis</h3>
<p>
	Root cause analysis would be much more effective if I was on T-Mobile&apos;s end and could actually implement the solutions that would fix the root causes.
	It also would help to understand the behind-the-scenes situation on their end.
</p>
<h4>Define the problem</h4>
<p>
	The problem was very simple, but four-fold.
	First, T-Mobile&apos;s tablet-activation website was malfunctioning.
	It was refusing to activate my tablet plan, but wasn&apos;t giving any reason as to why or what went wrong.
	Second, T-Mobile Web support was refusing to manually activate the $a[SIM] card on the tablet plan.
	Third, at one point, a member of T-Mobile support had messed up the $a[SIM] card, making it unable to allow the tablet to access the tablet-activation website anymore for further activation attempts.
	Finally, T-Mobile&apos;s tablet-activation website was set up in a screwy way, where the website <strong>*must*</strong> be accessed using the $a[SIM] card&apos;s connection.
	As one of the T-Mobile support representatives had messed up the $a[SIM] card, that was no longer a possibility, and while I should have been able to access the tablet-activation website using my laptop and Wi-Fi connection, that wasn&apos;t allowed by T-Mobile.
</p>
<h4>Collect data</h4>
<p>
	My main proof that the problem exists is that the T-Mobile support representatives are directly contradicting the instructions provided with the $a[SIM] card.
	Clearly, the T-Mobile support representatives that I&apos;ve been dealing with are not well-informed.
	Additionally though, the T-Mobile tablet-activation website is admitting that there&apos;s an issue in activating the $a[SIM] card.
	The error message that the website provides directly tells me to contact T-Mobile support about the issue.
	After the T-Mobile representative messed up the $a[SIM] card, the proof that it was messed up was that the device was no longer capable of receiving a signal using that $a[SIM] card, but could still reach the towers while using other $a[SIM] cards.
</p>
<p>
	The impact of malfunctioning website is that, at least in some cases, users cannot activate their tablet plans on their own, and must reach out to T-Mobile support for help.
	At the time of the problem, I had no way to know what situations in which the error occurred, so I didn&apos;t know who all was affected.
	The impact of the T-Mobile support team being ill-prepared for and ill-informed about this type of situation is that anyone without telephone service that has been affected by the website error isn&apos;t able to activate a tablet plan at all.
	Or rather, they can&apos;t get their tablet plans activated without going through the same struggle with T-Mobile support that I was going through.
	The impact of the messed-up $a[SIM] card was that I no longer stood a chance of diagnosing the issue on my own and had to fully rely on T-Mobile support for everything related to the issue.
</p>
<h4>Identify possible causal factors</h4>
<p>
	T-Mobile&apos;s broken website, their support team&apos;s inability to provide working solutions, and the fact that the $a[SIM] card had been cut off from the towers were three separate issues with separate causes.
</p>
<h5>The website malfunction</h5>
<p>
	The most likely cause for the website&apos;s issue was hacky programming.
	Likely, the website was making invalid assumptions.
	The website might be assuming that I&apos;d use a certain Web browser that I don&apos;t have access to.
	More likely though, the website was assuming the presence of certain operating system components.
	The website was probably instructing the cellular towers to send some signal to my mobile instructing it to do something to confirm the activation.
	However, as my device is running an unexpected operating system, T-Mobile&apos;s assumptions that any specific software component exists would be invalid.
</p>
<p>
	A definite cause for this issue was that the T-Mobile activation system uses <strong>*different*</strong> steps for activating tablet plans as it does &quot;smartphone&quot; plans.
	The &quot;smartphone&quot;-activation page works perfectly and is much less complicated.
	Setting up a tablet plan should be as easy as using the working activation website, then just choosing a tablet plan instead of a &quot;smartphone&quot; plan.
</p>
<p>
	I have no idea how long the problem had existed, but I&apos;d been dealing with the problem for four days.
</p>
<h5>The T-Mobile support team&apos;s inability to help</h5>
<p>
	The T-Mobile support team&apos;s inability to help stemmed from two main causes.
	First, their default answer that they were trained to use for this situation was chosen based on the assumption that everyone has telephone service.
	Second, probably due to a lack of training of lack of experience, the support team didn&apos;t seem to know that another option existed.
	As confirmed by the fact that the twentieth support representative was finally able to help me without requiring that I get ahold of a telephone and make a telephone call, there was in fact a way for T-Mobile Web support to completely fix the issue; T-Mobile telephone support was not the only option.
</p>
<p>
	I imagine that this issue has been going on for years, though I have no way to know for sure.
	Many companies, especially banks and telephone companies, seem to assume that everyone has telephone service.
	There likely wasn&apos;t a sudden drop in the level of training provided to T-Mobile support representatives, so this is likely to have been a persistent problem.
</p>
<h5>The blocked $a[SIM] card</h5>
<p>
	One support representative failed to pay attention to what the problem was, and jumped in in the middle of my conversation with another representative.
	Instead of reading the whole conversation, it seems that they only read the most recent few lines, and jumped to a hugely-invalid conclusion about what I wanted done.
	Instead of setting up a new plan on the new $a[SIM] card, they transfered the existing plan from my old $a[SIM] card to the new one, resulting in the old $a[SIM] card shutting off and the \$40 $a[USD] credit on the second $a[SIM] card being lost.
	I got them to reverse most of the damage.
	My old $a[SIM] card came back online and my \$40 $a[USD] account credit was restored, but in the process, it had caused the new $a[SIM] card to be shut off instead.
</p>
<p>
	This issue had been in effect for only one day.
</p>
<h4>Identify the root cause or root causes</h4>
<p>
	There are two root causes.
	First, T-Mobile is trying to treat tablets as a different type of device than &quot;smartphones&quot;, despite the fact that &quot;smartphones&quot; are just miniature tablets.
	As such, they are requiring that a different activation page be used to set up plans for those devices.
	Despite having tried to activate my plan on a Galaxy Tab 2, a device that T-Mobile recognizes as a tablet, I ran into issues because this activation form is less tested than the &quot;smartphone&quot;-activation form.
	Using a single Web form that allows any device to get any plan, there would be only one activation form to debug, and it&apos;d be well-tested by all of the customers that activate devices.
	This type of error would have been uncovered long ago and would be fixed by now.
</p>
<p>
	The second root cause is that T-Mobile is assuming that everyone has or wants telephone service.
	They aren&apos;t training their Web support team to handle certain types of issues, instead training the Web support team to redirect requests for help with those issues to the telephone support team.
</p>
<h4>Recommend and implement solutions</h4>
<p>
	The only obvious solution from my end was to make some noise.
	I can&apos;t fix T-Mobile&apos;s issues, but I can make it known that not all of us customers are able to access a telephone and that not all of us customers want to purchase telephone service.
	I let T-Mobile support know repeatedly that if they were unable or unwilling to help me without having me make a telephone call, that I&apos;d be more than happy to take a refund instead, but that if they were not going to issue a refund, they <strong>*were*</strong> going to activate my tablet without my making a telephone call.
	They were going to either keep their word as printed on the $a[SIM] card packaging or they were going to give me back my money.
	I also appealed to their sense of public relations by making public social networking posts about my problems in activating the tablet plan.
</p>
<h3>Five whys analysis</h3>
<p>
	The five whys analysis was the least helpful for this particular situation.
	I feel like it would have been more helpful if I was the one that could do anything about the issue, as it would have helped me track down the causes in the website and company policies and fix them.
	Finding an unbroken chain of five questions that didn&apos;t lead me through a question that I couldn&apos;t answer wasn&apos;t an easy task.
	It didn&apos;t help that T-Mobile never would explain the reasons behind their motives.
	Basically, all that they&apos;d say is that this was just the way that they do things.
</p>
<p>
	Problem: I can&apos;t activate my T-Mobile tablet plan.
</p>
<p>
	Why? T-Mobile doesn&apos;t allow tablet activations through the main activation page, instead requiring that a tablet-specific activation page be used, and that page is broken.
</p>
<p>
	Why? T-Mobile prefers to force &quot;smartphone&quot; users to include a voice bundle in their plan to make more money.
	The tablet-activation form is likely broken due to lack of testing and/or invalid assumptions on the part of T-Mobile.
</p>
<p>
	Why? The lack of testing is due to the fact that less tablets are activated than &quot;smartphones&quot;.
	The invalid assumptions would be due to laziness on the part of the developers.
</p>
<p>
	Why? Less tablet plans are activated than &quot;smartphone&quot; plans partially because T-Mobile prevents tablet plans from being activated on &quot;smartphones&quot;.
	Many people still use voice though.
	&quot;Smartphones&quot; are more common than larger tablets both because of price and because the smaller size makes it easier to carry &quot;smartphones&quot; in pockets.
	Lazy developers are a symptom of being trained to think that quick and hacky fixes are cheaper than standards-compliance.
</p>
<p>
	Why? People think too much in the short term.
	A quick and hacky fix saves money in the short term, but leads to more difficult maintenance and customer complaints in the long term.
</p>
<p>
	Counter-measure: Developers need to be taught the value of clean and maintainable code.
	Hacky code that makes potentially-invalid assumptions will only lead to higher costs later.
	Someone is having to maintain that hacky activation form and its back end.
	Additionally, I took the time of twenty different support representatives before my problem was solved.
	I can&apos;t be the only one with this issue and human hours are one of the most expensive resources that a company must pay for.
</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>
	By working through the issue using each of the four critical analysis tools presented this week, I was able to find that the ladder of inference and root cause analysis were the most effective for my particular situation last month.
	I also saw how the five whys method could have been a powerful tool, provided that my situation were different.
	The five whys analysis requires more give and take, so both parties need to be cooperative for it to be effective.
	Starbursting was sort of useful for trying to figure out what questions to ask, but I&apos;m not convinced that it would be useful in very many situations.
</p>
<h2>Disclaimers (feel free to skip these)</h2>
<p>
	While this issue was quite obnoxious, it shouldn&apos;t be taken to mean that I&apos;m not still a fan of T-Mobile.
	In truth, this is the first major problem that I&apos;ve ever run into when dealing with the company.
	Furthermore, we here in the United States don&apos;t have a whole lot of choice when it comes to $a[GSM] providers.
	We only have two carriers.
</p>
<p>
	If you consider $a[CDMA] service as an acceptable alternative to $a[GSM] service, you can add two more carriers to the list, but our choice is still very limited.
	However, a mobile device that I can&apos;t trust is one that&apos;s useless to me.
	Having a trustworthy device starts with having a trustworthy operating system, and I can&apos;t trust an operating system in which the source code isn&apos;t available and isn&apos;t auditable.
	Without the availability of public audits, you can never be sure that your device is acting on behalf of its owner instead of its programmer.
	The only fully-free (and therefore the only trustworthy) mobile operating system that I know is Replicant, which is mostly produced overseas.
	$a[GSM] is the global standard; $a[CDMA] is only used in a very small number of countries.
	The lead developer of my operating system operates out of France, and is therefore unable to develop on and test $a[CDMA] devices, as there are no $a[CDMA] towers in the area.
	Because of that, Replicant does not run on any $a[CDMA] devices, so while $a[CDMA] devices can be useful for many use cases, they&apos;re not at all useful for mine.
</p>
<p>
	The two major $a[GSM] carriers in my country both have child companies that sell other plans and have $a[MVNO]s that sell service off of their towers.
	MetroPCS, T-Mobile&apos;s child company, only makes their tablet plans available for one device, a device that they not only no longer sell, but also that isn&apos;t useful to me because it doesn&apos;t run a trustworthy operating system.
	Cricket, {$a['AT&T']}&apos;s child company, doesn&apos;t offer tablet plans at all, so a voice line would have to be purchased, despite the fact that I don&apos;t make or take telephone calls.
	{$a['AT&T']} proper, unlike T-Mobile, Cricket, and MetroPCS, will cut you off or charge overage fees if you go above a certain pre-specified data connection usage limit, and that limit will be very low unless you pay {$a['AT&T']} more than you&apos;d have had to pay T-Mobile, Cricket, or MetroPCS for their unlimited use connections.
	That&apos;s not to mention either that I would rather not fund {$a['AT&T']} (or Cricket) because of their shady business and political practices.
	The $a[MVNO]s are still an option, but they tend to have prices above the main two companies and their child companies.
</p>
<p>
	T-Mobile is my favorite carrier, and that&apos;s not going to change any time soon.
	They offer the flexibility that I need, lower prices than competitors, and they&apos;re less evil than {$a['AT&T']}.
	However, their $a[SIM] card activation process for tablets is a black box, and until this conflict had been resolved, I had no way to know what had gone wrong or how to avoid it next time, and T-Mobile support was quite unhelpful for the first few days.
</p>
END
);
